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cat527
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
Posts: 8
Location: Chicago
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 Posted: Tue Oct 19, 2004 11:42 pm Post subject: Absolutely need TEFL to get good work? |
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Hi, I apologize to all of you who already worked to get your TEFL -- but I'd like to ask if it's difficult to find work with good schools in Beijing and Shanghai if I merely have a university Bachelor's degree (in English literature) and have worked the last four years as a journalist.
Any thoughts on this? Thanks. |
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lagerlout2006
Joined: 17 Sep 2003
Posts: 985
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| Posted: Wed Oct 20, 2004 2:29 am Post subject: |
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Funny you say "merely" a BA . BA is a lot more important than a snake-oil TEFL.
CELTA is asked for by many schools but you should be OK. PEK and SHA are more competitive for jobs for obvious reasons. Connections help but people get work in these places. |
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Chris_Crossley
Joined: 26 Jun 2004
Posts: 1797
Location: Still in the centre of Furnace City, PRC, after eight years!!!
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| Posted: Wed Oct 20, 2004 6:02 am Post subject: Minimum wage |
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| Robert Lubeck wrote: |
| You can get work on the Mainland as long as you have a pulse. It will be a pathetic wage though and may even be as low as 3,000 RMB a month (about enough for a pizza a week). The untrained attract an unremarkable wage. |
I read on one website of a university in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (in the extreme northwest of China) that was offering 2,200 RMB per month. This is the lowest salary that I have yet seen advertised for any expatriate teacher working full-time at a university in China, although one thing to bear in mind is the amount of classroom time per week that one may be expected to do there.
Some schools, I have noticed, advertise something like "10-14 teaching hours per week". In such cases, it is likely that they may offer the expatriate just 10 hours per week of work. Sounds good, unless the expat realises that he or she has probably been cheated by being given the minimum wage, and then he or she may find it impossible for the university to agree to give him or her more work, in which he or she may have to undertake part-time work outside, which may be against the school rules. Still, extra part-time work won't hurt, so long as the university or the school doesn't find out.
Locals who are in charge of schools (especially private language schools or "training centres", as they laughingly refer to them nowadays to make them more grandiose than they really are), allegedly have a low tolerance of expats working part-time for other schools, partly because they fear that they will "take away" their customers.
Yes, even university students are "customers" nowadays simply because they bring in revenue just like any other business, even if universities in the PRC may be viewed cynically as no more than glorified cram schools and/or exam-passing factories. In the meanwhile, a lot of private schools rip off adult students and/or parents of young learners by charging exorbitant tuition fees. At the same time, the schools make life hell for the poor sod who has to teach spoilt brats who are totally disinterested in learning anything because they are forced into the classroom against their will.
Private schools, especially franchised ones, seem to be more interested in having an expatriate as a "face" and don't care much if you don't have four years of bachelor's degree level education. So long as you are a native speaker, that seems to satisfy them, even if, officially, expats are supposed to have a degree. However, in the three years that I have been teaching in the PRC, I have worked alongside people who have not even completed their bachelor's degree yet or else dropped out of college altogether.
To some schools, I reckon that "just" having a bachelor's degree and four years of experience as a journalist makes an expat somewhat overqualified! |
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go_ABs
Joined: 08 Aug 2004
Posts: 507
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| Posted: Wed Oct 20, 2004 6:12 am Post subject: |
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Have a look at most of the jobs advertised. They'll say something like "Bachelors (any discipline) required. TEFL Certificate a definite advantage". That should tell you everything you need to know.
PS I'd like to congratulate Mr Crossley on a reply of superb length to a 3-sentence query.  |
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Chris_Crossley
Joined: 26 Jun 2004
Posts: 1797
Location: Still in the centre of Furnace City, PRC, after eight years!!!
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| Posted: Wed Oct 20, 2004 12:20 pm Post subject: Rambling |
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| go_ABs wrote: |
| I'd like to congratulate Mr Crossley on a reply of superb length to a 3-sentence query. |
Just rambling on, go_ABs! I sometimes do this - mea culpa!
Looking back at the 3-sentence query, I must confess that I don't know whether or not it's difficult to get work as an EFL teacher in either Beijing or Shanghai, but I can imagine how more than a few expats may think that the big money is there just because the cities are big and there "must" be plenty of schools which hire expats as teachers.
My advice would probably be to avoid the big cities at first, unless one is really set on being there because of an intense interest in nightlife! |
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Roger
Joined: 19 Jan 2003
Posts: 9138
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| Posted: Thu Oct 21, 2004 5:12 am Post subject: |
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...and just out of curiosity: why would you want to refrain from earning a TEFL cert?
You don't badly need the money first, do you? If so, you better stay in your country and work there - higher salaries! |
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sojourner
Joined: 28 Jan 2003
Posts: 738
Location: nice, friendly, easy-going (ALL) Peoples' Republic of China
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| Posted: Thu Oct 21, 2004 5:18 am Post subject: |
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Cat,
Chris is absolutely right: you should consider cities other than Shanghai or Beijing. Most reasonably sized cities contain those modern facilities and comforts that many FTs seem to regard as indispensable for a 'good life'.
With a BA degree, in the college/uni sector, you should be able to get about 4000 RMB per month for 16-18 teaching hours per week - a 'teaching hour', in China, is usually about 45 or 50 minutes. You'll also be provided with a rent-free, fully-furnished flat - non-shared, of course ! It's also possible that you won't be charged for utilities. You may be offered a much higher salary at a language school, but the hours would probably be longer - also, you would probably have to put up with crap from the manager or D.O.S. should parents and students ever complain about your teaching style,etc. In the college/uni sector you are usually given considerable freedom on how you teach from the material provided. So, stick to the tertiary sector - and avoid, at all costs, language schools !
In your post, you enquired about TESOL training. Currently, it is possible to get a uni job here without any sort of training - although, I'd imagine, a college would probably give preference to someone who has been trained. But, having undergone suitable training (eg CELTA or the Trinity course ) would provide you with many useful teaching skills that would enable you to do your job reasonably competently - something that your prospective students would expect As I recently mentioned in a posting to another thread, if you find the cost of CELTA training in the US to be too prohibitive, you could always consider enrolling in such a course in Bangkok, before heading off to nearby China.
You mentioned that you are an experienced journalist. Why don't you do a search for those unis and colleges that offer journalism courses ? With your background, you would probably be offered a job teaching 'journalism English' ! With your extensive experience in journalism, you might even be able to bargain for a salary in excess of 4000 RMB. Also, in many unis and colleges, you might be expected to teach subjects such as Western Culture, British/American Literature, International Trade, etc - as well as the usual Oral English and Advanced Reading.
Good luck.
Peter
Last edited by sojourner on Thu Oct 21, 2004 7:18 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Chris_Crossley
Joined: 26 Jun 2004
Posts: 1797
Location: Still in the centre of Furnace City, PRC, after eight years!!!
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| Posted: Thu Oct 21, 2004 5:47 am Post subject: Big cities and (non-)shared flats |
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| sojourner wrote: |
| Chris is absolutely right: you should consider cities other than Shanghai or Beijing. Most reasonably sized cities contain those modern facilities and comforts that many FTs seem to regard as indispensable for a 'good life'. |
Thanks for your support, Peter. I myself have visited Beijing and Shanghai, but I wouldn't want to live or work in them, because they are too crowded and too expensive. Besides which, China is, in terms of land area, one of the biggest countries in the entire world. There is no point whatsoever in limiting oneself to the really well-known "international" cities; you might as well stay at home.
Wuhan, where I am, is a city that is heading in that direction, but at least one has a sense of the "real China" where foreigners are few and far between in number and the customs and the habits (and the food!) are very Chinese. China is much more than rice and noodles and chopsticks, so anybody wanting to come to this country to get a full "flavour" of life here should consider coming to the interior of the country rather than stick to the east and south-east coasts.
| sojourner wrote: |
| [...] In the college/uni sector, [...] you'll also be provided with a rent-free, fully-furnished flat - non-shared, of course! |
Whereas, when I started working for my private language school in Wuhan 36 months ago, I had to share a living room, a kitchen and washing and shower facilities with a fellow teacher. However, I had my own en-suite bath and WC, whereas he did not - he had to use the facilities in the washroom.
| sojourner wrote: |
| You may be offered a much higher salary at a language school, but the hours would probably be longer - also, you would probably have to put up with crap from the manager or D.O.S. should parents and students ever complain about your teaching style,etc. |
I can certainly relate to this, as I worked at that private language school for two years and was acting DOS for 11 months. Any complaints I received about inappropriate, inadequate or plain lousy teaching styles (including my own!) were, however, usually directed via the head course consultant - an obvious advantage of not being able to speak the lingo!
As for how I addressed the complaints, I merely said that I would "speak with the teacher in question", and the parents and students had to be satisfied with that "explanation". Not that I would have been remotely satisfied if I were in their shoes, considering that many of the parents were demanding people and were paying exorbitant tuition fees which did not give value for money. However, with this being China, that was all the explanation they were going to get!
| sojourner wrote: |
| So, stick to the tertiary sector - and avoid, at all costs, language schools! |
You can also consider the public primary sector. After two years of being at that language school, which I gladly left and I have never looked back, I became a teacher at the public primary school where I still teach. I am having a really great time here, and the kids are great, too. It was certainly a change not to have to dread teaching kids, because that was what it was like for many of my now-ex-colleagues at that private language school - everybody simply DREADED teaching the kids on weekend afternoons. Happily, I do not have that feeling any more!
| sojourner wrote: |
| With your extensive experience in journalism, you might even be able to bargain for a salary in excess of 4000 RMB. |
With my two years' experience at that language school, I managed to negotiate a higher-than-advertised salary at my primary school (even if it was not higher than what I received when I first started working there), so negotiating on the basis of experience is well worth a try. I will do the same again - at both this and other schools I will consider - when my contract is due to expire in January. |
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Chris_Crossley
Joined: 26 Jun 2004
Posts: 1797
Location: Still in the centre of Furnace City, PRC, after eight years!!!
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| Posted: Thu Oct 21, 2004 5:53 am Post subject: Define "there"! |
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| I wrote: |
| With my two years' experience at that language school, I managed to negotiate a higher-than-advertised salary at my primary school (even if it was not higher than what I received when I first started working there), so negotiating on the basis of experience is well worth a try. |
By "there", I meant at the private language school, not the primary school. Salaries are usually lower in the public sector than in the private sector, but I (and, undoubtedly, a great many others) have discovered that there is far less stress and trouble in working at public-sector institutions than private ones. My salary may be lower, but I have never regretted my decision to leave that private school (after my second 12-month contract had expired, that is) and go to the public one. It was worth it. I fully recommend it! |
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Dan_R
Joined: 11 Oct 2004
Posts: 12
Location: North Carolina, USA
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| Posted: Thu Oct 21, 2004 5:41 pm Post subject: |
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| I am new to this board and am also wondering if I should get a TEFL certificate. I have a bachelor's degree in accounting and several years' experience in accounting, and am interested in entering the world of English teaching. I have sent my resumes to several places in Korea and Taiwan, plus have applied for a couple of programs in Japan. I state in my resume that I will be available to start around January of 2005 (I would need a few months to prepare to leave the USA). I started applying about a week ago, and so far, only Hess Corp in Taiwan has replied to me and invited me to fill out a second online application. The recruiters in Korea I have been applying to havent replied to me yet. I wonder if that is more likely because I cannot start for several months, or possibly because they prefer to hire the people with a TEFL and/or teaching experience. Or maybe they just have a backlog. I'm thinking of calling a recruiter or two one of these nights to see if I can find out. Otherwise, my plan B is to go out and get the TEFL certificate. |
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Chris_Crossley
Joined: 26 Jun 2004
Posts: 1797
Location: Still in the centre of Furnace City, PRC, after eight years!!!
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| Posted: Fri Oct 22, 2004 3:54 am Post subject: No TEFL cert no problem in China |
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| Dan_R wrote: |
| I am new to this board and am also wondering if I should get a TEFL certificate. I have a bachelor's degree in accounting and several years' experience in accounting. [...] My plan B is to go out and get the TEFL certificate. |
If you are interested in teaching in China, Dan_R, then you need not implement your Plan B. All you would need officially is a bachelor's degree, which you have. (The fact that it is in accounting does not matter; it could be in any subject.) With several years of accounting experience, you could very well approach universities with departments of accounting and ask whether they would be interested in having you.
I was actually approached (albeit by e-mail) a few weeks ago by a university in southern China and asked if I could teach accounting and finance to first-year students. I had to decline the request, firstly because I am contracted to my current school until next January, and secondly because I simply can't do the job! I have an MBA degree, so the university (mistakenly!) thought that I could teach accounting and finance merely because one of my modules was in this very subject.
You will find that the average salary for an expatriate lecturer at a university can vary. One very good website is the China TEFL Network [...] and you will be able to see advertisements from many of China's universities, some of which are looking for specialists. You may even find one for accounting. If you would like to do this, then it is well worth while.
On the other hand, there are a lot of schools outside of China which insist of having somebody qualified with a TEFL certificate (I myself do have the Trinity Certificate in TESOL), in which case you may have to implement your Plan B. There are other threads on this forum, which deal with this very subject, so looking at those would be worth your while, too.
Good luck.
Last edited by Chris_Crossley on Sun Oct 24, 2004 5:55 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Chris_Crossley
Joined: 26 Jun 2004
Posts: 1797
Location: Still in the centre of Furnace City, PRC, after eight years!!!
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| Posted: Sun Oct 24, 2004 5:54 am Post subject: China TEFL Network URL |
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| I wrote: |
| One very good website is the China TEFL Network [...], and you will be able to see advertisements from many of China's universities, some of which are looking for specialists. |
The URL is http://www.chinatefl.com so follow this link and click on the "English" icon to reveal a separate web page with a false colour map of all of China's provinces and many many colourful rectangles with the names of many institutions which advertise regularly on those pages, some on a permanent basis (i.e., some of those adverts have never been removed, as far as I can tell). |
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